Best of SI: Michael Jordan and Baseball Should Have Made Sense Together

Michael Jordan was headed to the major leagues.

That is not the common historical take on his 1994 abscondence from the NBA to minor league baseball. Playing for the Double A Birmingham Barons of the White Sox organization, Jordan showed a roller coaster of a swing (long, loopy and daunting), batted .202, and was so green he didn’t know which base to throw to nor the difference between a two-seam fastball and a four-seam fastball.

The popular narrative took deep root because of rough first impressions (shocker! Jordan was 31 years old and had not played since high school) and the harrumphs of the hidebound baseball establishment that did not take kindly to someone who “didn’t pay his dues” and was regarded as a celebrity interloper.

“Let’s make sure we include baseball journalism in that assessment,” says Sandy Alderson, the Oakland A’s general manager at the time. “They tend to be … let’s say conservative on baseball issues. Remember the SI cover?”

Jordan had played for only three weeks in training camp when SI ran a cover story by Steve Wulf under this heading: “Bag it, Michael! Jordan and the White Sox are Embarrassing Baseball.”

The longer view tells a different story. Jordan was becoming a big leaguer the way most minor leaguers do: unglamorously, by grinding at the game, making adjustments and accumulating wisdom with every failure and every 10-hour bus ride.

Jordan, for instance, batted .276 in August. After his season in Double A, Jordan hit a very respectable .252 in the Arizona Fall League, a developmental league for the top prospects in each organization.

Click Here to read the rest of "Michael Jordan Chose Baseball. Baseball Never Chose Him Back," for FREE at Sports Illustrated!